I have a product that I recently bought from them (a DVD writer) that is shockingly bad. It's "shocking" only because it came from them. It's the sort of thing that if you buy it from Creative Labs, you take it back to the store, figure "Oh well, those things aren't ready for prime time yet," and think no more of it.
I was so sure that HP would have done this right that I went to their support forum expecting to find that everyone but me was happy with the unit. Not exactly. It was clear from the sheer number of irate IT guys on there that this thing has serious driver and software problems, and that it has no business even being on the market in the state it's in, let alone with an HP logo on it. There are guys on there talking about lawsuits if HP doesn't take them back
I think we can both guess that this thing was declared 'finished by order of the king' and sent out the door in order to make the quarter. It must really frost engineers at a place like HP to be ordered to ship stuff that they know isn't ready. They know what's being lost by doing that; I don't think Carly has a clue.
Some CEOs still do that, but for many of them, it's only when there's a guy with a camera walking around with them.